
Glass C- w ^ ^ 



Book. 



ti^HvJS 



FUNERAL SERMON 



.T 



ON THE LATK 



CAPT. LUCIUS H. BOSTWICK. 



BY REV. J. ISHAM BLISS. 



JUNE lO, 1863. 



SERMON, 



PREACHEO AT TflK FUNERAL 



CAPT. LUCIUS II. BOSTWICK, 



CALVARY CHURCH, JElilCHO, VT., 



rX u :s i^ X <>, I w «j :t . 



BY REV. J . I S H A M ?> L 1 S S 



MONTPELIER : 

printp:d by e. p. walton. 

18G3. 



^H3 



7 



SERMON 



ST. JOHN, XI : 25. ~I AM THE RESURRECTION' ASD IHB LIFE; HE THAT BELIEVETU IN Me, 
THOUGH HE WERE DEAB, TET SHAIL HE LIVE. 

I. Our Lord, we observe, concentrates Martha's attention 
on Himself as the original spring of life. This sister of 
Lazarus evidently considered that she was attributing very- 
extraordinary dignity and influence to the mysterious man 
who had gone familiarly in and out of the household at 
Bethany, when she told him " If Thou hadst been here my 
brother had not died. But I know that even now, whatso- 
ever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee." She 
obviously thought she was conceding very much when she 
recognized Him as thus puissant in procuring, but as an 
agent, life from God. Aad very much would it have been 
to concede, had Christ been other than He was — divine. 
Mighty and honored indeed must be the creature who should 
have such power with God, that God, out of regard to him, 
would at his pleasure impart to or withhold from any being 
the glorious gift of life. 

But Martha's admission does not satisfy our Lord. He 
will be recognized as something more than an instrument. 
It is not enough for Him to be regarded simply as a means, 
however exalted and efficient. He is not merely the me- 
dium, the channel of life, but the source of life, nay, the life 
itself. " I am the resurrection an^ the life." How false 



and inadequate, in the light of j-uch a declaration as this, ap- 
pear ihuhc views whidi would make Chiist sim|»]y a human 
being, endowed it may Ite with exti'aordinai-y wisdom and 
\iilue liy nature or the Hj»irit, in order that Fie might be 
useful to liis rellow's by His philosojihy, His instructions or His 
example. In the mouth of which greatest of the piojjhcts, 
fiowtvcr lull and aullioi itativo his divine connnission, would 
uv.t I he as.M>riion of the text be a gross offence to us V Had 
one of the pro))hets, as a divinely inspired teacher, revealed 
liftj-giving doctrines, and only declared, as our Lord did at 
another tim.c, that his words were life, i. e. had that derived 
life which had been communicated to them by the great 
primal fount of life, we might have freely granted his claim, 
but had he gone farther and dared to call himself the life, in 
the absolute sense of the word as employed by Christ, who, 
that regards idolatiy as an abomination, would not have 
repudiated him with abhorrence ? For must w^c not aver 
with David," With Thee is the foundation of life." Do not 
we all know that there can be but one independent, original 
well of life, and that, He who is the sole, eternal generator 
and preserver of all things ? Yet Christ unhesitatingly pro- 
nounces Himself such an original, self-subsisting spring of 
of life. " As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He 
given to the Fon to have life in Himself." Or in the, if pos- 
sible, still more unconditional terms of the text, " I am the 
resurrection and the life." 

If Christ is of any value to us, then, He is our all in all. 
He is even more than our prophet, priest and king, more 
than our instructor in righteousness, our sacrifice for sin, the 
prescriber and controller of our conduct ; He is our very 
life, — our God, and that as the " living God," — the Alpha 
and Omega of all physical or spiritual vitality. 



II. In the second clause of the text, our Lord reveals to 
Martha the comprehensiveness of His meaning, in calling 
Himself the resurrection and the life. When He says " he 
that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
live," He manifestly intended to signify that He was the 
author and bestower of a life far more important than the 
mere natural, temporal life, — a life which a mere natural 
and physical death should be powerless to affect. So insig- 
nificant docs He know the simply physical dissolution to lie, 
compared with that nobler life which He holds in Ilis gift, 
that, in the verse which follows the text, though aware that 
the Itelieving Lazarus had been lying in his tomb hard by for 
four days, He leaves the natural death, as if unworthy even 
of mention, entirely out of the account, and declares unqual- 
ifiedly, " Whosoever liveth aud believeth in Me shall never 
die." The highest favor which Martha hoped or wished the 
Master to obtain was a few years prolongation of her broth- 
er's natural earthly being. Christ shows her that He has 
power to confer a much greater blessing, in comparison with 
which, for its durability and richness, the one she asks is not 
even to be named. As has been said, " Unless the Lord had 
lifted Martha into a higher region of life, it had profited her 
little that He had granted her heart's desire. What would 
it have helped her to receive back her brother, if again she 
were presently to lose him, if once more they were to be 
parted asunder by his death or her own ? This lower boon 
would only prove a boon at all if he and she were both made 
partakers of a higher life in Christ ; then, indeed, death would 
have no more power over them, then they would truly possess 
one another, and forever ; and to this the wondrously deep 
and loving words of Christ would lead her. ***** 
•' J. am the resurjection and the life ;' the true life, the tnie 



6 



resurrection ; the cverlastiDg triumphs over death, they are 
in Me. * * * In Me is victory over the grave, in Me is 
life eternal ; by faith in Me that becomes yours, which makes 
death not to be death, but only the transition to a higher 
life."* Christ meant Martha to understand that He was 
more than the dispenser of our bare natural being and that 
He had more than the power at pleasure to prostrate or 
raise up these our fleslily tabernacles, though both these high 
prerogatives were His. He meant her to understand that 
He was the resurrection and the life in the broadest spiritual 
sense, and that to whom he was such life, whatever natural 
changes they might pass through, whatever experience of 
dissolution they might undergo, their real vitality should 
ever in the present world and the future remain undiminished 
and undisturbed ; while those, to whom He was not such a 
life, whatever their semblance of animation, however pro- 
longed the integrity of their bodies, however active the 
merely natural energies of their being, could at no time have 
any veritable life, and their existence, at the most, could ever 
be but a " living death." 

Undoubtedly from Christ proceed the issues of life and 
death in all their lower relations. As one with the Father, 
and tlie one by whom all things consist, it is but as He sends 
forth His spirit that all animate beings arc created, and as 
He " withdraws their breath, that they die and return to 
their dust." All these indications of vital power, which we 
observe in our own curiously and wonderfully wrought 
frames, are emanations from Plim who is " the life," throb- 
bing heart, rushing current, quivering nerve and vibrating 
muscle. From Him came to all our restless intellectual 
and moral faculties their original impulse, and by Him is 

*Bev. F. W. Robertson. 



their present vigor sustained. With Christ is the exclusive 
direction as to the how, when and where all these physical 
faculties shall come to a stop. Exactly in accordance with 
what seems good to His own will, shall He prescribe for cacli 
of us that temporary destruction, which is to come upon 
these houses of clay, and bid the fairest and bravest forms 
lie down to ho " crushed before the moth." Undoubtedly 
also it is Christ alone who has the power to rear again these 
crumbled temples. It will be His life-infusing voice only 
that in the latter days can penetrate the dull earth of the 
innumerable millions of our great brotherhood, who now but 
as ashes lie mingled with the clods of the valley, sprinkled 
on lone mountain tops, mouldering under cathedral arches, 
strewn on war fields, garnered in classic urns, sepulchred in 
hill sides, citadeled within pyramids, wrapped in polar snows, 
tossed in wandering graves of the sea, and cause the sense- 
less matter again to take human shape and motion, " bone 
come to bone, sinew, flesh and skin covering them," all as 
of old, so far as the needs of the occupant for the new state 
of existence appointed him require. Christ is tlic resurrec- 
tion and the life so far as all this, and this is not a little ; 
but is He so no farther? Were Christ's vitalizing capabil- 
ities exhausted by imparting to us originally our merely 
physical and intellectual activities, or by hereafter re-ani- 
mating our disorganized bodies, and rejoining them to our 
souls in an eternal union, divine as would be such power, 
could He satisfy our want ? could He be our life to the full ? 
could He be our life in the most momentous sense ? Had 
Christ, as the Life, ability only to bestow upon us this earthly 
natural life and then power to do no more, to how many 
would the grant be Init a doubtful benefit. How many 
writhing in physical and mental anguish, with no hope 



beyond, might naturally groan out with Job, " Perish the 
day wherein I was born." " Wherefore is light given to 
him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul." 

Were Christ's ability as the Resurrection limited to the 
strict literal raising of our bodies, what advantage could He 
be to us, could He not also furnish us a power to save our- 
selves from rising but to a resurrection of condemnation ? 
For some " shall awake to shame and everlasting contempt," 
as well as some " to everlasting life." No, " it is not all of 
life to live," in the ordinary earthly sense, nor "all of death 
to die," in the ordinary earthly sense. Life and death liave 
far profounder and weightier meanings than these, meanings 
which often subvert and contradict the common and super- 
ficial significations, and point out, as we have intimated, 
many a seeming life to be a real death, and many a seeming 
death to be but the development of a fuller and more real 
life. 

Tnie death consists not simply in a dissolution in the rela- 
tions of a man's soul and body, but in a dissolution in the 
relations between a man's soul and God's spirit. True life 
consists not simply in preserving the natural union of man's 
physical and intellectual constitution, but in preserving the 
spiritual union between man's soul and God. 

St. Paul exactly defines true life and death, when he 
declares that " to be carnally minded is death ; but to be 
spiritually minded is life and peace ;" that is, to yield to the 
dictates of that fallen, fleshly, selfish nature by which the 
first Adam separated the race from God, is death ; but to 
yield to the dictates of that renewed, spiritual, divine 
nature by which the second Adam reunites the race to God, 
is " life and peace." Thus to be spiritually brought near 
and made one with God is the only life indeed, and to be 



9 



spiritually sundered and made distant from God, the only 
death indeed. Apart from a vital, spiritual communion with 
God, whatever show of life our lower powers may exhibit, 
our existence can be but " a death in life ;" but with this 
communion, whatever show of death the disintegration of 
our lower powers may exhibit, there will still remain a "life 
in death," It is because He is the rescuer of us from this 
deeper death that Christ is most significantly " the Resurrec- 
tion ;" it is because He is the imparter of this higher life that 
Christ is most significantly " the Life." To lead its true life, 
every living creature must fulfil the established divine law of 
its own particular being. The life that the moss, the oak 
and the lion manifest, is in each excellent and beautiful in 
its degree ; but the oak, to live its true life, must live a 
higher life than the moss ; the lion, to live his true life, 
must live a higher life than either moss or oak. The higher 
creature cannot be restricted to the lower creature's life and 
not perish. Man, a spiritual and immortal creature, cannot 
lead a simply mortal and natural life, and not undergo 
spiritual death. We were made in the image of God, and 
designed in our sphere to be actuated by the same holy im- 
pulses as our Creator, to have the same fellowship with Dim, 
and to have, as our ends, kindred spiritual pursuits. Accor- 
ding as we come short in fulfilling this idea of our being, 
our true life is destroyed, and spiritual death and confusion 
ensue. 

Who of us has not at times felt a sad consciousness that 
he was less than he should be, that he has somehow failed to 
meet the true design of his being? Who docs not at times 
see before him an ideal human life far different from that 
which he has actualised ? Who has not at times heard a 
still small voice deep within, proclaiming with irresistible 
force that he, the oflspring of the spiritual God, an lieir of 

2 



10 



immortal existeuce, was created for some nobler purpose 
than to go tlirougli that petty round of physical and intellec- 
tual earthly labors and enjoyments, which make up a mere 
worldly life, — eating, drinking, buying, selliag, struggling 
for a little more empty social, professional or political 
honor. 

In tlic beautiful words of another*: " We all long, occa- 
sionally at least, do wc not, for reconciliation with the Al- 
mighty Spirit, tliat lives and breathes on every side of us, 
in these skies and shores, these heart-beats in our breasts, 
and these pulses of the ocean on the beach. Which one of 
you is content — deeply, thoroughly content, with a decorous 
and prosperous and cultured career ? Is there no crying out 
from within for the living God ? Does not the infinite and 
solemn mystery challenge us from the hours of suffering and 
of silence and even of gladness itself V Does not the very 
beauty of the eartli and the sea and the sky awaken an 
awful sense of the ' light that never was on sea or shore V " 
Wliat arc these dissatisfactions and yearniugs but sure re- 
minders that a richer and sublimer life than the one we 
naturally pursue has been intended for us ? Then in so far 
as we have not lived this higher life, by reason of substitut- 
ing in its place a lower life, we have lost it and become 
spiritually dead. All of us must admit that this has been 
our case. How then are we to be set right ? IIow is this 
lost true life to be restored to us ? Can we bring it back 
ourselves ? God and our own experience reply with an 
earnest ' No !' The dead cannot raise themselves. The 
Scriptures unqualifiedly declare " that the carnal mind is 
not subject to God's law, neither indeed can be." However 
distinct our perception that we ought to do so, we find, when 
we are left to the direction and aid of our simply natural 

*F. D. HuDtint'ton, D. D. 



11 



impulses, that we do not succeed in brioging ourselves into 
a peaceful, congenial, affectionate intercourse with our 
Heavenly Faiher, that there is some estrangement and 
obstruction between us which ever remains unremoved. 
However desirable and beautiful in our better moments may 
appear that life of purity, love, peace, holiness, heavenly 
mindedncss, which our conscience approves as the fulfilment 
of the divine law upon us, we find, on attempting to realize 
it, that it is utterly beyond our unassisted attainment ; we 
find " another law in our members warring against the law 
of our mind." Our good sentiments, impulses, resolutions 
come to no effect ; our passions, selfish desires, earthly- 
mindodness still keep their dominion over us. We yet re- 
main " deai in trespasses and sins." We cannot save 
ourselves. " Who," then, " shall deliver us from the body 
of this death ? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our 
Lord," — our Resurrection and our Life. " God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life." " And this is the record, that God hath given to us 
eternal life ; and this life is in His Son. Whosoever hath 
the Son hath life ; and he that hath not the Son of God 
hath not life." The sum and substance of the gospel is the 
" good news " it brings of a restorer to impoverished and 
undone men, of that true eternal life from which they have 
fallen. Christ came not as a mere teacher or example, but 
as the heavenly " bread of life," as the divine dispenser of 
spiritual vitality to men. " He was manifested to abolish 
death and briog life and immortality to light." By His 
own death He destroys the penalty of man's death ; by his 
personal in-dwelling through His Spirit, Ho destroys the 
dominion of this death and brings to light a higher than the 
original life. 



12 



And this diviue life is accessible to us all. '' As in Adam 
all die, so in Christ ' may' all be made alive." " Whosoever 
will let him take of the water of life freely." " Whoso 
coraeth to Mc I will in no wise cast out." All that we have 
to do is to come to Christ ; to believe in Him as the life : 
lilce St. Paul, " to live the life we live in the flesh by faith 
in the Son of God." Faith in the appointed Savior is the 
simple instrumentality through which descends the great 
blessing. " The just shall live by faith." Can we but be 
persuaded to exercise this faith, Christ will assuredly pour 
into our thirsty souls those spiritual " living waters " which 
shall be in us " a well of water springing up into everlas- 
ting life ;" a new principle will be established in us ; affec- 
tionate communion will be opened with our divine Father ; 
greater harmony be introduced into the several parts of our 
own nature ; a supernatural strength afforded us successfully 
to conquer the world, the flesh and the devil ; and that 
entire sanctification and ennobling of our being be begun, 
to go on increasingly' through time, and when He that is our 
resurrection shall bring our purified bodies and souls again 
together for their higher immortal union, to be consummated 
in that never to be interrupted state of holiness, where •' our 
life shall be completely hid with Christ in God," and the 
Life evermore dwell in us as God dwells in Him. 

I do not know, dear friends, in this heavy grief with 
which God has seen fit to afilict us, where we shall look for 
more substantial consolation than in the just confidence wc 
feel that he, whom we mourn, was and is a partaker of that 
divine and imperishable life we have been describing. No 
one familiar with our dear young brother's spiritual course 
can doubt that " the life he lived in the flesh, he lived by 
faith in the Son of God." No one can doubt that he was a 
true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, With this assurance 



13 



we cannot lament as for the dead. Our brother has depar- 
ted from us, but he not is dead. He will no more go in and out 
among us as was his wont. The earthly places which have 
known him will now know him no more. This little sanctu- 
ary will never again echo his voice raised in prayer and 
{u-aise. His home and the homes of neighbors and associ- 
ates will not again be brightened by his quiet, gladdening 
presence. A solemn change has come over his physical 
frame ; the spirit has separated from it. The soft light that 
beamed from his eyes is now quenched. His heart and 
pulse no longer beat. All his senses have become sealed 
and his body is soon to be laid away in the earth to return 
to its kindred dust. Yet he is not dead. He still lives. 
The great author and sustainer of life makes us certain of 
this. " Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never 
die." " He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live." Under different and, as the Scriptures 
assure us, under better conditions, in an existence unfamiliar 
to us, he who has left us yet lives in all that constitutes the 
best sense of life. Christ was his resurrection and life in 
this world, and will continue to be his resurrection and life 
in that other world, on which he has now entered. He has 
only gone on to manifest, in a higher sphere and free from 
the embarrassments of earth, that divine, eternal life which 
was begun in him here. We may bewail our own loss, we 
may bewail our deprivation of his conscious presence, of his 
gentle looks, kind words and useful deeds ; but we cannot be- 
wail his death ; for he is not dead. He has simply attained 
to a higher form of life than we have yet reached. Now for 
the first time indeed may he be said to truly and entirely live. 
It is barely tlie accidentals surrounding his existence which 
are affected by the great change which has come upon him ; 
;thc great, essential, vital principle of his being has only devel- 



14 



oped into a fuller aud freer activity by it. What an inex- 
pressible comfort, in a sorrow like curs, ought our Lord's 
consoling words in the text, then, to be I 

Most of you, who are assembled here, were personally ac- 
quainted Avith Lucius BosTWiCK, and it needs no affirmation 
of mine to make you aware that ho possessed a character of 
no ordinary purity and sweetness. Having just entered 
upon manhood, he had had comparatively little opportunity of 
making the beautiful (qualities of his nature felt in the way 
of public achievement ; yet it may be truthfully said that, 
in those positions of public responsibility suitable to his age 
which he had already occupied, he acc^uittcd himself with 
marked credit to himself and to the satisfaction of those to 
whom ho was responsible. But his life, until the last year, 
was mainly spent among you in the quiet discharge of 
private duties, and seldom are these duties more faithfully 
performed tlian they were by him. His merit consisted, not 
merely in the amount of actual accomplishment achieved, 
but as much in tlie admirable spirit with which all he did 
was performed. 

The grace of God, acting upon a disposition of peculiar 
natural amiability, enabled him indeed to present a char- 
acter of rare lovliuess. Few persons so directly win 
the confidence and afl'ection of all with whom ihey come in 
contact. It seems impossible for one to have known him 
and not to have loved him. From his childhood's com- 
panions to his comrades in the army, his associates felt 
towards him not only respect, but a peculiar warmth of 
affection. It could hardly have been otherwise, exhibiting 
tlie remarkable gentleness and unselfishness he did. He 
possessed almost feminine delicacy and tenderness of feeling, 
and from boyhood showed a consideration and thoughtful- 
ness for the wants of others seldom seen. It had ever 



seemed one of his chief delights to find out some grateful 
attention which he could offer to some one in need of it. 

He was eminently humble and unobtrusive in feelicg and 
deportment. Naturally retiring, he instinctively shrunk 
from conspicuous positions and posts of responsibility. His 
liigh conscientiousness often forced him into places of trust 
which he would otherwise gladly have escaped occupying. 
His unaffected modesty of manner and language I)oth bound 
the hearts of all his old friends to him and at once attracted 
all appreciative strangers to him. 

He was above all characterized by a strong sense of duty. 
This indeed was the great anchor as well as ornament of his 
character. Once assured that a thing ought to be done, he, 
at whatever personal cost, did it. Those of you, who are 
familiar with the faithfulness with which he discharged his 
obligations to his family, to his friends, to his church, at 
home, in the array, or in whatever relation he was placed, 
will bear witness to this. His strict conscientiousness and 
lofty principle gave a vigor and firmness to his charac- 
ter hardly to be expected in one by nature so yielding and 
unassuming. Self distrustful as he was, he could always be 
depended upon to do what he thouglit it became him to do. 

It was the same controlling sense of duty wliich actuated 
him in otlier circumstances, that impelled him to offer him- 
self to that service in which he finally laid down his life. 
Few, we believe, have taken 'ni arm? in defence of their 
country, influenced by purer or more unselfish motives. 
Constitutionally he was of anything but a martial spirit. His 
nature was too merciful and kind for the necessary cruelties 
of war in themselves not to be abhorrent to liira. But he 
believed that our country needed the arm of her young sons to 
save her from a fearful peril. He believed that, situated as he 
was, he could better respond to this need than many others, 



16 



and enlisting as a common soldier, he went forth with his 
life in his hand, never, as it has pleased God, to bring that 
life back again. 

Our hearts may properly bleed at our own bereavement of 
one so beautiful and brave and good, to many of whom he was 
so inexpressibly dear, but we cannot sorrow for 1dm. lie 
fought a good fight. As a man, as a soldier, as a Christian, 
he performed well his part. He has gone to receive his 
crown ; he has passed on higher; he has completed the most 
difficult stage of human existence ; he has attained that goal 
towards which God would have all his human creatures tend 
— a blessed immortality. 

It is no fiction, dear brethren, that he who believes in 
Jesus Christ shall " never die." There is no more substan- 
tial reality than that Jesus Christ is, to those who receive 
Him, an actual, eternal resurrection and life. The eternal 
Vine itself may as soon perish as those branches which it 
supplies with its living sap. Since he, whom we loved so 
well, is not perished, but has only ascended to a fuller life, 
though we sorrow, we may do it with a high and holy hope 
for him, — and for ourselves, if we share in that life he pos- 
sessed here, that wc too, not long hence, shall go to share 
with him, in that more glorious life which he possesses now, 
in that blessed region where there shall ))c " no more death, 
neither sorrow, nor crying," but where we shall enjoy an 
endless existence of inconceivable purity and bliss, in the 
immediate presence of Ilim who is our " Resurrection and 
our Life." 



y /l4 



